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When gasoline sold at record prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, "I think it's time to say to these people, 'Stop ripping off the American people.'" When the average price of regular gas was close to $4 a gallon, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for Congress to look into breaking up giant oil companies. The claim was that "Wall Street greed (was) fueling high gas prices."

On Monday, President Obama will unveil his proposed federal budget for 2016. Voters should be warned that virtually all the numbers reported in news coverage of the federal budget will be misleading at best.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister during World War II. Churchill took up painting as a hobby in 1915, after the Gallipoli debacle, where 46,000 allied lives were lost over nine months of the campaign. He went on to paint more than 500 paintings during his lifetime. As wartime prime minister, he took a break from painting, focusing instead on the task at hand - winning the war, no matter the cost.

Enthusiastic, entertaining, energized and eminent, President Obama's demeanor and delivery at the State of the Union belied his political reality. Unbowed, unbroken and possibly unaffected by the recent midterm Republican wave, Obama displayed his great skill by delivering an emotional teleprompter-driven speech that was a throwback to his first election. Varying tempo, pitch, passion and inflection, his speech was more a theatrical performance than a delivery of a prewritten, pre-released text.

Our 18-year-old granddaughter is living with us again as she goes to school, and I love having her. It reminds me of the time she was a baby living with us, and she was the love of my life - besides Molly, of course - and I took her everywhere. I packed her on my back as I covered meetings, we visited Disneyland every week, I decked her out in Disney clothes, we rode every mall merry-go-round in Southern California, we watched some of the most God-awful movies together - the adventures of Lava Boy being the worst - we enjoyed our evening walks ...

My first week of legislative "work" is complete, and it has been a whirlwind. It is hard to imagine how any person can meet so many people and deal with so many issues so quickly. Luckily, I have a very good mentor in former Representative Doug Holt who is helping me wade through the distractions.

Last week's column focused on the ways liberals use blacks in pursuit of their leftist agenda, plus their demeaning attitudes toward black people. Most demeaning are their double standards. It was recently reported that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House majority whip, spoke at a 2002 gathering hosted by white supremacist leaders when he was a Louisiana state representative. Some are calling on Scalise to step down or for House Speaker John Boehner to fire him. There's no claim that Scalise made racist statements.

As members of the 114th Congress were sworn into office on Tuesday, their party affiliations described what happened last November: 246 of the 435 representatives and 54 of the 100 senators are Republican.

As we enter 2015, the politics of the president's health care law are little changed from last year or the year before, or any year since it was passed. The details change with the calendar, but year after year, the law remains a major drag on President Obama's popularity and legacy.

New Year's is the almost-perfect holiday (Christmas takes the blue ribbon). It's a combination of reflecting, celebrating or possibly just being glad of getting rid of the old year - while at the same time looking forward to the potential and possibilities of the year to come. It's the bridge between the past and present, where what has been done is over - but the future still looks bright, if a bit hazy.

I had just returned from the local toxic waste site where I had disposed of my holiday fruit cakes and was busy cramming my Christmas tree down the garbage disposal (don't ask), when I heard a knock at the door. I figured it was the Environmental Protection Agency coming to talk to me about polluting the toxic waste site with fruit cakes.

Archive By Section - Columnists

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this common sense fact is routinely ignored.

You've got to give it to Bill Hoosen. He's a bold, well-spoken retiree and Newton County resident who's unafraid to stand up to the Board of Commissioners when he thinks they're about to vote into law a budget that he believes will harm the county.

Somewhere, in one of your closets or in your basement, do you have a big box of "sentimental" items that you just can't part with? Until last week, I had three big containers of cards, letters, articles, drawings, awards, and all the trappings of a history that I wanted to keep for posterity. And there were more photographs than I could count. I suppose I could have kept the tubs in a closet until I was in a nursing home. "Oh, did you see Mr. McCoy's collection of antique Christmas cards? They are really, really old!" Well, that ...

Three recent sports biographies, two about baseball stars Stan Musial and Hank Greenberg, and another about boxing great Joe Louis, are not only interesting in themselves, but also recall an era that now seems as irretrievably past as the Roman Empire.

"It is what it is." The line may not have been original, but when a character played by Leonard DiCaprio in the movie "Blood Diamond" uttered it, it seared itself into my consciousness. It was one of the "Aha" moments that Oprah has popularized.

The phone rang the other day and on the other end of the line was Gay Blade, the world's flaming liberal. Gay spends a lot of time trying to raise my sensitivity toward liberal issues. So far, Gay has not had a lot of luck.

With the announcement she is running for the Republican nomination for President, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman appears to have emerged as the primary point person for the Tea Party and will make great waves during the campaign, assuming she does not continually step on her tongue.

When did moving become so difficult? In college, I could pack everything I owned in my little MG and move from dorm to apartment to home with no sweat. Fifteen years later, I packed the barest of necessities in a new Volvo and moved to Tennessee. Well those easy days are gone. We just moved, and it took two huge trucks and more boxes than I could count. We packed, we packed some more, and then we got down to serious packing. It was time consuming to fill all those boxes, but I did learn some new packing tips that ...